Middle of a tender. PPP project. Pressure everywhere. The client wants the best offer. The lenders want certainty. The SPV wants bankability. The construction company wants protection. The bid team wants sleep. The bid manager wants to make it until the 5 days snap holidays in Cuba starting the day after the submission. Somewhere in the middle of that beautiful circus, the SPV and the construction company start negotiating the construction contract. The contract that will sit behind the...
1 day ago • 2 min read
Think about an event. I don’t know. A political one. Mr Trump visiting Mr Xi in China. Same event. Same date. Some newspapers will say Trump is brilliant. Others will say Trump went there to drop his pants, beg, and give Xi everything he asked for. Same event. Same dates. Different newspapers. The difference? Different points of view. And different agendas. Oh, surprise. Now you know why the client, if you are on the other side of the table, doesn’t have much sympathy for you and thinks you...
2 days ago • 1 min read
Not exactly “gold plating” in the luxury sense. Worse. Engineering gold plating. They didn’t want a baggage system. That would have been what they needed, but too boring. Too normal. Too “let’s move suitcases from A to B without humiliating ourselves in front of the entire planet.” No. Denver International Airport wanted something better. A fully automated baggage system. Airport-wide. High-speed. Radio-controlled carts. Miles of track. Computers deciding where every bag should go. Basically,...
3 days ago • 1 min read
They wanted to save money. Of course. Because nothing says “excellent public procurement” like taking a complex, mission-critical system and pretending the cheap option is also the clever option. In 2007, the Queensland Government in Australia needed a new payroll system for Queensland Health. Not a tiny organisation. Tens of thousands of employees, multiple awards, complex rosters, allowances, overtime, penalties, shifts… The kind of payroll system that makes normal payroll systems cry in...
4 days ago • 1 min read
Let’s say you want to get in shape. You can buy a gym membership. Fine. You pay the fee. You get the little towel. You walk in pretending you know exactly what you’re doing. Then you start lifting weights like a chicken “sin cabeza”… no head. A machine here. Some dumbbells there. A bit of treadmill because you saw someone else doing it. And then you hope willpower, motivation, and the fitness gods do the rest. Good luck with that. Now, if you’re serious… Really serious… You hire a personal...
5 days ago • 1 min read
The dream accomplishment is not a promotion. Sorry. I know LinkedIn wants you crying in front of a cake with the company logo… so that you produce lots of likes. “After 17 years, I am humbled to announce…” Lovely. Very touching. Very corporate. Very LinkedIn… But no. The real dream is a WhatsApp message. “Can you jump on a call? We have a problem.” That’s it. No fireworks. No orchestra. No posts in social media with 46 hashtags. Just one message. Because someone, somewhere, in a project that...
6 days ago • 1 min read
Alicante, Spain, around 2007. A young engineer was working on a large transport project… a toll road. Not the boss. Not even a “deputy”. Not even close. His job was mostly coordination. Trackers. Minutes. Interfaces. The glamorous stuff nobody respects until it goes wrong. One week, there was a problem with a utility diversion. Nothing spectacular. No collapse. No newspaper headline. Just one of those boring issues that can quietly destroy a programme… and with that… a project… and some...
7 days ago • 1 min read
If you remain in the same position, your progression is linear. At best. You accumulate “years” of experience. But sometimes that only means exactly that. Years. Big jumps only come with exposure. A new role. A bigger room. A heavier decision. You won’t evolve at the same pace as project manager, project director, COO, or CEO. Impossible. Exposure changes you. Responsibility changes you. Putting your ass on the line to be kicked changes you. That is what sets you apart. That is what makes you...
8 days ago • 1 min read
Two brothers. An old van. Five years travelling across the East Coast of the US. Many have dreamed about it… but these guys had the huevos… or guts. They survived selling T-shirts at fairs. College dorms. Random events. Sleeping in the van. Eating peanut butter. Smelling probably like a dead raccoon wrapped in ambition. That was Bert and John Jacobs. The founders of Life is Good. In 1994, after a particularly bad trip, they had $78 left. Not $78,000. $78. Most people at that point would have...
9 days ago • 1 min read